


High-Five Me, Bro

by Ellimac



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Aromantic Character, Asexual Character, F/M, Gen, grown up twins, stretching the definition of OC since only two of them have names but bear with me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-06
Updated: 2014-11-06
Packaged: 2018-02-24 09:47:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2577089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ellimac/pseuds/Ellimac
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A brief summary of Mabel's dating life during her teenage years.</p>
            </blockquote>





	High-Five Me, Bro

The year Mabel turns fourteen, she gets her first boyfriend. He’s a regular human, too, no mermaids or vampires or gnomes in disguise. Dipper spends a lot of time out of the house, avoiding them, until Mabel seeks him out one day and confesses that kissing is really not all it’s cracked up to be, and he kept wanting to do it, and finally she told him it wasn’t going to work out. Dipper gives her a great big hug and tells her that maybe the next one won’t like kissing as much.

Mabel has two more short-term boyfriends that year, each one lasting no longer than a month. Each time she tells Dipper that it just wasn’t working, that they each wanted something that she just didn’t.

The year she turns fifteen she dates a girl. That doesn’t work out, either, though Wendy high-fives her for trying.

“I like high-fives more than kissing,” Mabel tells Dipper. “Why doesn’t everyone just high-five instead of kiss? It would be so much cooler.”

Dipper shrugs. “I guess some people think kissing is pretty cool, too.” Privately, he’s among them, but his twin sister seems to be going through a bit of a crisis, and he’s not going to tell her she’s wrong.

Mabel’s most successful relationship so far begins in December, two weeks before Christmas. She meets a guy at the mall (as far as Dipper can tell, she literally ran into him while each was carrying a stack of presents, and they had to spend fifteen minutes sorting out whose presents were whose, and after an experience like that, well, they bonded), and it turns out he’s only in town for a couple weeks, visiting his aunt. They exchange numbers and skype names, and Mabel spends as much time as she can in front of the computer chatting with him.

“It’s so great,” Mabel gushes to Dipper, who is, at the time, girlfriendless. “I can talk about everything with him! He’s so sweet and nice, and he blows me kisses every time he signs off. Isn’t that _sweet_?”

“I thought you didn’t like kisses,” Dipper says.

“It’s _different_ when it’s online, silly,” Mabel says. She has stars in her eyes and absolutely adores this boy. Dipper wisely decides not to say anything more on the subject of kisses.

When they break up after a year, Mabel is devastated. She goes through all the ice cream in the house and spends a lot of time in sweater-town.

“How am I ever going to find a boy like him again?” she says to Dipper, when they’re alone. “All the other ones just want to kiss and do mushy stuff! He was so nice and sweet about me not wanting to do that stuff. No one else understands.”

Dipper does not say, “I thought you liked mushy stuff.” He suspects that Mabel is finding, much like kisses, a lot of the mushy stuff she thought she’d enjoy is just not as fun in practice. Instead, he says, “I’m sure he’s out there. Don’t worry, you’ll find him.”

She smiles at him. “Thanks, Dipper. That means a lot.”

She’s a lot more selective over the next year or so, going on a couple dates, but making sure they all know that this is _only_ a date, not a relationship, yet. And none of them turn into relationships. Dipper expected her to be upset about this, but she seems, after turning around from the breakup with the last guy (his name was Pete), to be even more upbeat than usual.

“I decided you were right, Dipper,” she says one day, when he observes this to her. “Whoever my perfect boyfriend is, he’s out there somewhere. I’ve been rushing things too much. I’ve just gotta find him on my own time.”

It’s a surprisingly mature philosophy, coming from Mabel; but then, Dipper reflects, they aren’t twelve anymore.

When Mabel is seventeen, she meets a boy as they tour the same college campus together. His name is Michael and he is, according to Mabel, even sweeter than Pete was. They hit it off right away, and agree that, even if neither of them ends up coming to this college, they’ll keep in contact. Mabel is back on skype all the time. Dipper learns a lot of things about Michael that he didn’t really care about knowing.

He’s from Washington. He’s a little older than they are. He has three pets, two dogs and a cat. He’s always wanted an iguana. He’s asexual.

“What?” Dipper says, when Mabel imparts this information on him with an air of excitement. “What does that mean?”

“It’s exactly what it sounds like, silly,” Mabel says. “He says he’s not interested in sex or sexual relationships. He doesn’t feel that kind of attraction toward people.”

“My seventeen-year-old sister should not be talking to me about sex,” Dipper says.

“We’re both seventeen, you nerd,” Mabel says with a giggle. “Anyway, you’re missing the point. I’m _not_ talking about sex, that’s exactly what I mean! He’s not interested in it. That’s a thing that people can be.” She watches him eagerly, waiting for the penny to drop. When it does, his eyes go wide.

“Oh! Mabel, are you saying that you’re—”

“Yes! Also aromantic, which is the same thing, but for romantic stuff instead. Can you believe it? All this time I thought there was something wrong with me and it turns out it’s a real thing that other people feel, too!” She’s so excited she does a little skip-dance around the room.

“Mabel, that’s great!” Dipper can’t claim to really understand it, but who is he to argue when she’s found something that makes her this happy?

She leaps over to him and gives him a big bear hug. “I know! You’re the best brother ever. You were right! The perfect boy for me really _was_ out there!”

Dipper makes a mental note to do some research on this asexuality thing, and hugs her back.


End file.
